Margaret Spellings reacts to Trump putting pressure on governors to reopen schools
President Trump says his administration would ‘very much put pressure’ on governors to reopen schools in the fall amid the coronavirus outbreak; Former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings weighs in.
Former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said on Wednesday that governors “can and must” reopen schools in the fall in spite of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re trying to balance health and safety with the need to educate a generation of students, our future workforce and our citizenry. We can do it,” Spellings told “America’s Newsroom.”
Spellings, who served under the George W. Bush administration, said “reopening schools would take a lot of creativity, interaction with parents, and contingency planning.”
“We can and we must do it,” Spellings said.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION VOWS TO WORK 'HAND IN HAND' WITH LOCAL GOVERNORS TO REOPEN SCHOOLS
At a White House event Tuesday with first lady Melania Trump, President Trump said his administration would “very much put pressure” on governors to reopen their states’ schools in the fall amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“We don't want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons, they think it's gonna be good for them politically, so they keep the schools closed, no way,” Trump said after noting that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced plans to reopen schools starting in August. “So, we are very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools.”
“Our country has got to get back, and it’s got to get back as soon as possible, and I don’t consider our country coming back if the schools are closed,” the president added. “Everybody wants it, the moms want it, the dads want it, the kids want it.”
He said that the COVID-19 death rate was down “ten-fold” thanks to promising therapeutics. “We will put out the fires as they come up but we have to open up our schools,” Trump said.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar added that the U.S. mortality rate for coronavirus was “among the lowest if not the lowest in the developed world.”
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“We have the tools to reopen schools,” Azar added. “We’re at a very different place now than when we were two or three months ago.”
Trump pointed to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which was represented at the event and repeatedly has urged officials to let students be physically present at school.
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Spellings said that she does not know a policymaker or governor who wants to keep kids at home from school in the fall. Furthermore, Spelling pushed back on Trump’s threat to defund schools that refuse to open, claiming that public officials appear to be motivated to reopen by navigating the circumstances.
“The federal government is a minority investor in our public school so it really is a local decision and I think governors and superintendents and other policymakers are working through the details of getting this done,” Spellings said.
“They know it is essential to operate the business community, it is essential to the generation of their own workforce and so on. They’ll learn from others but I don’t think we need to threaten people with tactics when they are motivated to do so anyway.”
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